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This analysis doesn't hold up when you consider that apartment buildings pack multiple cuboid spaces into a single larger cuboid building, sharing floors and ce

by sltkr 3y ago

This analysis doesn't hold up when you consider that apartment buildings pack multiple cuboid spaces into a single larger cuboid building, sharing floors and ceilings with each other to lower heating and cooling costs. This becomes obvious when you take it to the extreme. A cube of 10 × 10 × 10 meters can be divided into 1000 units of 1 cubic meter each, and has an external surface area equal to 6 × 10 x 10 = 600 square meters, or 0.6 square meters surface exposed per unit. A solitary sphere with a volume of 1 cubic meter has a radius of 0.62 cm and a surface area of 4.836 square meters, which is over 8 times worse, even ignoring the fact that it's harder to utilize the space in the sphere.

picometer 3y ago
Yes, the surface area ratio is only applicable to whole buildings. But, regardless of how the interior is divided, the whole space has to be heated. (Empty apartments notwithstanding, since that would change the shared-internal-walls calculations.) The savings you get from multi-unit buildings ultimately comes from the resource-sharing of the multiple tenants, rather than the shape of the whole building.
- picometer 3y ago
  Now that I think about it, maybe the spherical or cylindrical shape is actually better suited to an apartment building. The inner units _would_ have typical rectangular angles. For units along the curved surface, some walls will be straight and some will be curved. Plus, the curvature would be “wider” for a larger building, which would make it a little easier to design or arrange furniture.
  - Someone 3y ago
    The inner units also would have zero windows. Even if that wouldn’t make them so undesirable as to be basically useless, that probably would be in conflict with building codes in large parts of the world. the best you could do is a fairly small sphere with kitchens, bathrooms and storage spaces in the inside.

by sltkr 3y ago

picometer 3y ago

Yes, the surface area ratio is only applicable to whole buildings. But, regardless of how the interior is divided, the whole space has to be heated. (Empty apartments notwithstanding, since that would change the shared-internal-walls calculations.) The savings you get from multi-unit buildings ultimately comes from the resource-sharing of the multiple tenants, rather than the shape of the whole building.

picometer 3y ago
Now that I think about it, maybe the spherical or cylindrical shape is actually better suited to an apartment building. The inner units _would_ have typical rectangular angles. For units along the curved surface, some walls will be straight and some will be curved. Plus, the curvature would be “wider” for a larger building, which would make it a little easier to design or arrange furniture.
- Someone 3y ago
  The inner units also would have zero windows. Even if that wouldn’t make them so undesirable as to be basically useless, that probably would be in conflict with building codes in large parts of the world. the best you could do is a fairly small sphere with kitchens, bathrooms and storage spaces in the inside.